Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023 and the associated bills. I'm happy to rise and speak on housing because housing is an issue not just in one particular place but right around the country. As the former Assistant Minister for Community Housing, Homelessness and Community Services, I drilled down into this space and worked with housing ministers across this space.

We looked at the homelessness rates—and I'm eagerly waiting for the current Minister for Housing to release the results of the 2021 census. The previous census, in 2016, showed there were a couple of areas of homelessness that actually improved but there were three areas that got particularly worse. The areas that got particularly worse were in overcrowding, which is commonplace in other parts of the world. If you go and live in some of the Pacific islands, with our neighbours, it's not uncommon for people to all sleep in one room. Here it's classed as homelessness, where you get a lot of people in severe overcrowding. That is one of the fastest-growing areas in Australia, and it'll be interesting to see the results there. I note that we gave the Western Australian government a payment to help with this. Do you know how much housing they built? None—absolutely none. They spent all the money on roads and infrastructure, which was a real shame.

The other area that is of particular concern is around domestic violence. That area has one of the fastest-growing rates of homelessness as well. With this bill the government wants to build 700 new homes, I think, for women and children escaping DV. But the former Morrison government built 6,000 places for women and children escaping domestic violence. The minister for social services at the time—I was working under her as the assistant minister—and I picked out those 6,000 places, including in the member for Solomon's electorate through the Salvation Army up in Darwin; we built some safe places. I'd be interested to know from the member for Solomon whether they are built yet; I haven't had the chance to get up there since that announcement. There were other places in Victoria and New South Wales where the coalition government did some really good work with that $60 million safe places package.

The other thing the coalition government did really well was support first home buyers. We helped 300,000 people into their first home. The Liberal and Nationals parties want people to own their own homes. That's why we put into place the First Home Super Saver Scheme, which the Labor government, in opposition at the time, voted against. It's also why we did the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme, which was really important as well. That has helped so many first home buyers right around the country. There are over 300,000 more people in their own homes now because of the coalition government. It was a very important policy.

We also helped community housing providers through NHFIC. The current shadow minister, Mr Sukkar, did some great work with NHFIC to open up opportunities for community housing providers all around the country. In particular, New South Wales took advantage of that the most.

In summing up, I would be interested to see those results in relation to the 2021 census, particularly around boarding houses—whether that has reduced. I want to commend the former Labor minister up there who worked with me to send letters to boarding house providers in Queensland to try and reduce the level of homelessness in Queensland around boarding houses.

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